Friday, July 13, 2007

This Sunday we are discussing, the conflicts of civilizations. I haveincluded a link in today's essay to the essay I wrote for What iscivilization? Hope you will find the time to the meeting on Sunday.

Sometimes I am asked about the philosophy group what we do, who we are,how it was started and many other questions. in my reply I find myselfusing expressions such as "I started the group ....," "I wanted tomeet....," we discuss.....," "I enjoy ....." the use of the such wordsas the adjective 'my' and 'our' suggests that somehow I owe the group orthat I have some sovereignty or some property rights over those thatcome to meeting.

Of course, such language is very common in our day to day life. We use'my' and 'our' to describe our family, a business or company, and ourfriends. Of course, the meaning of possession when we use my in thesecontexts is that it must, out of necessity, be a metaphorical meaning. Ihave no property rights over those who come to the meeting as much as Ihave any property rights over my friends or the people that might beworking for a business if I owed one. this possessive meaning is,however, very strong because we do have real property rights and afeeling of possession on material things such as a house, a personalcomputer, a car, a pen and so on.

I want to argue that although we, today, recognise, that the use of myin such expressions as my group and my friends implies metaphoricalpossession, this metaphor is not necessarily a natural one. Or at thevery best we can argue that there are biological/evolutionary groundsfor thinking that 'my' does imply physical possession.

In my essay, What is civilization? I identified a civilization with aliving biological system. I also identified a civilization as a groupmade up of individuals. The implication of all this is that it is in theinterest of individuals to cooperate in a group, for example, to takeadvantage of division of labour. But on a more basic level theindividual must also adopt a strategy to survive, in evolutionary termsthis means to pass on one's genes onto the next generation. And as anopen biological system, the individual must interact with theirenvironment to exploit it for survival and of course to limit ormitigate the effect of the environment has on the individual. The grouphelps the individual to survive. The cost for the individual is tocooperate with other members of the group. However, as Dawkins pointedout (see essay for references) the idea of group survival is false; thegroup does not take precedence over the individual in the evolutionscheme of things.

If we accept that the survival of the group is a myth, then how and whyshould individuals congregate in groups? At the basic level individualswith common genetic ancestry have a good reason to be together, at leastfor some periods of time; for example, babies with their parents. But asI have already pointed it also makes sense for individuals to cooperatein a group. On the other hand, some individuals might be compelled to bewithin a group either because they have been enslaved, in the same waythat some ants enslave other ants to serve them. Or because they do nothave enough economic resources to leave the group.

The link between civilization and my introduction about 'my' and 'our'is that we consciously or unconsciously think of being members of acivilization and that other people might be members of othercivilization. We can therefore find ourselves of speaking about ourcivilization or their civilization, thus bringing once again the idea ofpossession in our thinking.

For example we speak of western civilization, Chinese civilization,Islamic civilization and so on. In the Wikipedia entry on the Clash ofCivilizations by Samuel P. Huntington, there is a list of some of themore important civilizations in the history of human kind. However, themore we move in history towards modern times the more we seecivilizations moving away from geographical circumstance to groupidentity based on epistemological factors such as religions, politicalbeliefs and so on. So we have for example, the Mayan civilization basedin the geographical area of Central America, or the Egyptiancivilization based around the Nile River. Today western civilization isnot really based in one geographical area since many part of the worldconsider themselves as part of western civilization; Europe, Australia,Canada, and the USA.

Huntington believes that after the end of the cold war today's conflictsare clashes along the divisions of civilizations mostly based oncultural or religious differences. He refers to the conflicts betweenIndia and Pakistan, Chechnya, the ex Yugoslavia and of course thesupposed war on terror based between the west and Islam. One of hisstrong positions is basically that the belief of western civilizationthat it has discovered the 'universal' values is both naive and probablyleads to antagonism between the west and other civilizations. There aremany objectors to Huntington's position, but I won't be discussing thesereplies.

I will focus my discussion on western civilization, and its relationshipwith other civilizations. Indeed, today the most visible clash isbetween the west and other civilization; sometimes by the west somepeople mean the USA. Of course, I am using the word civilization in arather loose way since it is not clear that there are civilizations inthe classical model any more, where we find political ideology,religion, economic policies, and geographical location all in onepackage. I would say that the situation today is more groups spreadgeographically than geographical location giving rise to civilization.

It is therefore not clear whether we can speak of civilizations any moreor whether we should speak of groups and ideologies. The presentsituation in China is an example of a clash between groups rather thangeographical conflict. The rapid economic development in China has meantthat the old economic communist model is being replaced with acapitalist free market. One of the implications of this transition isthat labour conditions are really bad in China; not that they were everrosy in the past. (This is all documented and available on theinternet.) Those who are critical of western civilization, or ratherwestern economic model, would point out that this system is creating adivide between rural china, which is as impoverished as ever, and thenew middle classes in the cities.

But the clash is not between the west and Chinese civilization, butrather between an economic ideology, that by its very nature creates awealth divide, and old traditional economic practises that stand nochance against the new system. Maybe, we can understand this situation,by looking at the model of infections by viruses and bacteria. A personthat does not have an immune system equipped with antibodies to dealwith a given virus, is more likely to be attacked by that virus than onethat does have antibodies.

No doubt, the free economy model is a very powerful one, andirrespective of the morality and side effects, it can easily usurp anexisting model, for example the command type of economy found under thecommunist system. I would argue that one of the reasons why the freemarket economy model is successful is because it exploits the survivalinstinct of the individual. In reality, we might even argue that thefree economic model has been the prevailing economic model throughoutcivilizations and ages.

Few would disagree that the free economy model creates two groups withina society, a groups of a few people who control large amounts of wealthand other people who need a regular income to survive. Wealth usuallyequates with power or at the very least influence of power. Thus ifwealth is linked with political or economic power I would suggest thatthis is due to the fact that individuals can exploit their environmentmore successfully than the rest of the group. Thus those who haveeconomic wealth probably also have the edge in survival. We mustn'tforget that wealth is relative to one's environment and not someabsolute standard.

What can, therefore, be regarded as conflict of civilization is noneother than members within a group adopting strategies that might besuccessful and common within other groups. The china example can beexplained as either the west encroaching on the stability of Chinesecivilization (one of the civilizations identified by Huntington) or somemembers of the Chinese community adopting a system that benefits themmore than the old system. Although china has adopted the free marketeconomy principles (where it suites them) there is no uncontrolled rushby the same system to adopt other aspect of western civilization, suchas free speech or human rights. It is unlikely that western civilizationis in conflict with the Chinese civilization, on the contrary, thechances are that the Chinese civilization is cherry picking aspects fromother civilizations. And incidentally, other groups are cherry pickingaspects of the Chinese civilization for their own benefit. As Huntingtonpoints out, those countries around china are less likely to criticisechina or withdraw support because they stand to lose a great deal ofwealth if they did.

When I visited what was Czechoslovakia in the early 1990, about one yearafter the Velvet Revolution, some well informed people I spoke tocouldn't help point out the rampant pilfering and stealing of thecountry's infrastructure, from railway tracks to industrial cables. Thepeople I spoke to would say that those who were robbing the countrycould not distinguish between making a profit and steal from people.Some went on so far as to suggest that it was commonly believed thatcheating and stealing from people was indeed the meaning of to make aprofit. I have not been there since, from what people tell me now, itseems that this mentality has not totally disappeared. This is notsurprising since under the communist system the free economy wasregarded as a method of stealing from others.

The point is that groups are very prone to misunderstand andmisinterpret ideas, ideologies and maybe even actions from outsidegroups or worse still, be falsely indoctrinated. Let us take a verypresent day case of the war on terror for a better name. I specificallywant to focus on one aspect to illustrate how a conflict of civilizationcan easily be nothing more than a misinterpretation of some ideology orconcept. I specifically want to refer to the words jihad and crusade.

You will remember that soon after 9/11, President Bush used the wordcrusade in one of his speech when refereeing the need to fightterrorism. Not surprisingly, there was an up roar in Muslim countriesbecause in these societies crusade still means a Christian war againMuslims. As Mr Bernard Lewis* says in an article in the OpinionJournal,27 September, 2007, that this".....was unfortunate, but excusable. InWestern usage, this word has long since lost its original meaning of "awar for the cross," but "Yet "crusade" still touches a raw nerve in theMiddle East, where the Crusades are seen and presented as early medievalprecursors of European imperialism..."

Lewis says this about the word jihad, "Some Muslims, particularly inmodern times, have interpreted the duty of jihad in a spiritual andmoral sense. The more common interpretation and that of the overwhelmingmajority of the classical jurists and commentators, presents jihad asarmed struggle for Islam against infidels and apostates. Unlike"crusade," it has retained its religious and military connotation intomodern times."

If the evidence from the relevant regions and societies are any thing togo by, those conservative members within Islam who stick to the oldinterpretation of jihad seem to address their violent wrath againstother fellow Muslims more than they do other groups or civilizations.Even the present woes in Iraq are none other than a conflict betweendisparate local groups. The point is that whatever one's cause or reasonone does not clash with those within the group. Conflict within a group,I suggest, is evidence that groups are not the priority in biologicalsystems, but individuals are. Or sub groups within a bigger group, thusthe sub group falling victim of the ingroup bias which is members of agroup give preferential treatment to other members of the group thatthose outside the group.

However, this Jihad vs. crusade arguments introduces again the idea thatlack of knowledge about other civilization plays an important part inrelationships between civilizations. Our lack of understanding andawareness of what other peoples and groups do it would be difficult tounderstand their motivation. Let's take once again the issue of childlabour in certain countries, say for example, India or china. Whenwestern countries object to this practise most probably few people thatare directly involved with child labour know that western economies werebuilt with child labour during the industrial revolution. And those whodo know would use this as evidence to justify what they are doing.Basically their argument goes something like this: if you did it, thenit is alright for us to do it as well. Those who use this argument missthe whole point about the west's (certain groups within the west)objections to such arguments. The point is that we have learnt from ourexperience and there is no need for you to pass through the samehardships as we did.

The conflict of civilization is unlikely to be something that reallyexists as an ontological unity. It is more likely that what is reallyhappening is that groups within societies and nation states assertingtheir interest over other groups either within their own society orother societies. Each trying to advance their 'cause' if and when theopportunity arises. We mustn't forget that for every successful businessperson in china there are probably millions who are still living underoppressive and abject conditions. And for every self proclaimed defenderof Islam who blows up a bomb on a bus in London there are millions ofother Muslims who are law abiding citizens within the so called westerncountries. The idea that there is a clash between Islam and the west orthat the free market economy is displacing the Chinese system is ofcourse without any basis. Except of course that it makes senses for someto use this language especially if they have a lot to lose.

The question that ought to concern us is whether there is an objectivetest that can be used to establish if an activity or idea can beintroduced legitimately into another group or civilization. The firstthing that comes to mind about this test is what are we testing for? Arewe testing whether the new idea conflicts with the present practises orsomething else? In my opinion, we should test for the individual inother words, how does the new idea affect the individual? This is not aquestion of whether the individual is better off, but whether theindividual is free to develop his or her personal identity. Of course,such a question makes sense in a philosophy essay; an accountant wouldprobably want to know the state of one's bank account and not one'spersonal identity. Hence, a philosophical test does not imply beingbetter off financially or any other way.

Another issue such a test would introduce would be that everyone who isconcerned with test would accept the legitimacy and the credentials ofthe test. One test could very well be what I will call the medical test.This is what I mean. We all accept that medical treatment is generallyaimed at the individual; although medicine makes full use of statistics,at the end it is the individual who receives medical treatment.Incidentally, this is also evidence in favour of considering theindividual and not the group, or rather the group ought to be consideredthrough the individual. The test would be this: if we had a medicaltreatment B that was better than treatment A, would we be justified tooffer someone treatment A if they held radically different values thanus? to put this in a more real life context, if we had to aid a group ofpatients in china, India, Iraq or whatever country that might beregarded as members of a different civilization from our own, would webe justified in supplying twenty or thirty year old medical technology?(We probably do, but that does not affect the philosophical test.)

The answer is, of course, that we would never be justified to offeranyone twenty or thirty year old medical technology that is not aseffective as present day technology. In other words, medical technologyought to transcend civilizations or cultural norms. Why then should wemake allowances with such other things as human rights, free speech,political representation, impartial legal system, freedom of associationand so on? To conclude, we should not mix up oppressive politicalsystems or bad religion with norms that form part of a civilization.

A Note about the Essays

The essays are meant to give some ideas for the discussions we have. That is, if people feel like using them that way. I also use these essays to express some of my ideas and thinking on the subject.

However, because I usually write these essay at short notice, I have no time to do in depth research on the subject. And any ideas I feel are my own, might have already been expressed by others. But I did not come across them in the limited research I some times do.

Finally, most times I do not have time to polish my essay as they ought to be. I apologise for this.